


The Song of What Comes

by breathtaken



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Author's Favorite, Canon Era, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:32:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1921677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/breathtaken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>What came first were the stories</i>; but what is unspoken comes much later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Song of What Comes

**Author's Note:**

> For [Constance Bonacieux Appreciation Week](http://whyshouldmenhaveallthefun.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Content warnings: Some brief description of sex within marriage and its emotional effects. By modern standards Constance may not be considered as having given informed consent, so please proceed carefully if this is likely to be triggering.

**I. _Liet fan wat komt 1_**

What came first were the stories.

If mankind is a forest, then the stories are her roots. Hers, her cousins', her best girl friends'; her mother's before her and her grandmother's too, the echoes of an unbroken line of women reaching all the way back to Eve.

It was her grandmother's lips she heard them from, all their upturned faces straining to hear the ages-old words over the clang of her father at his anvil and the crackle and spit of her mother at her cooking pot, her brothers the sound of wood clattering on wood and triumphant whooping as the lesser amongst them were mercilessly vanquished, already advancing on that distant shining day when they would fight for their princesses' hands.

She knows she is no princess, just a blacksmith's daughter; but the stories belong to her, as to them all.

When Julien falls and sprains his ankle, Constance takes up his sword and bests three boys before her mother sees her through the kitchen window, sees the glint in her eye and hears the triumphant yell rising in her before she even has time to let it out.

She gets a clip round the ear and expects worse, until her father puts his hand on her mother's arm and draws her aside. She doesn't understand what passes between them, but though her mother clucks in disapproval she says nothing more; and only makes Constance scrub her dress in the stream until her fingers are numb and raw, and the hem is as white as a bride's.

 

* * *

 

**II. _Hoelang op 'e blommen in dyn hier_**

When her first blood comes, her mother gives her a cloth to tie between her legs and tells her that any man who says he loves her wants what belongs to her husband.

Although she does not understand, Constance accepts the lesson in silence, smoothing over her frown until her mother has left the room. She has learned that her mother is a keeper of secrets, and that unwanted questions are answered only with a cold, taut disappointment and extra chores.

She is not completely ignorant, though. She has learned already what is sacred, and what is sinful; that there are low men who will want to lie with her, though she does not yet know what that means.

She does not bathe with her cousins any more, but alone, this strange, still quarter-hour that's a world apart from the noise and bustle of her everyday life the first solitude she's ever known.

It's only here, hunched over in the soapy water, limbs shying away from the cold sides of the copper tub, that she looks at her new woman's body and wonders what is to come.

 

* * *

 

**III. _Yn my sjongt in stille stoarm_**

When she comes to Bonacieux's house it is very large, and very quiet; and when he leaves her alone for the first time – to buy cloth in Lille, he tells her, not more than half a week – she starts to talk to herself, fills the hours with an endless monologue of everything she's doing and thinking until she chokes on the words _I miss –_ and claps her hand over her mouth as if she's scared of what might come out of it.

 _Lucky_ , her mother said on their last morning together as she wove lilies of the valley into Constance's hair, _a tailor, no less_ ; and Constance saw the tears welling in her eyes as she turned away, biting her lip, and she knew her mother had never been prouder of her than in that moment.

When Bonacieux carried her to his bed and took her there, she bled; and he brushed her tears away and said she would learn to like it in time, his voice as strange and gentle as his hands on her body.

She has a trunk of new dresses, and petticoats, lace-edged, fit for a merchant's wife; and the neighbours look down on her for the way she speaks.

She sits by the fire with her embroidery on her lap late into the night, as she tells herself all of the old stories, one by one, imagining the upturned faces at her feet.

It is the first time she realises all the stories end with marriages.

 

* * *

 

**IV. _De sinne skynt dy iepen_**

When d'Artagnan bursts into her life like a song, she knows at once that he is her knight, even down to the literal sword at his hip. He's young and bold and stubborn, and everything her husband is not, and he goes to her head like wine.

She's been sleeping so long in this silent palace that she'd almost forgotten everything she once heard.

He takes her by the hand and leads her out into the light of his world, the same world her brothers once played at in the yard of her childhood home, where she holds tight to his warm, sure grip and focuses on the adrenaline that burns in her throat and the clash of steel on steel, and later on the feeling of his fingers reaching into places that have lain silent and making her sing; and she does not think of the consequences, or how his hunger and conviction sometimes scare her, or how she wants to be him more than she wants to be his, and she hides her words behind moans and sighs and kisses him as if she would take him over.

 

* * *

 

**V. _Op 'e jiske fan juster dûnsje de siedden_**

When d'Artagnan has gone, Bonacieux's house is at once too full and too empty; and as she scrubs the silent floor she feels all the words she knows pushing at her throat and clamouring for freedom, their power turned wild and destructive now there are no more stories to keep them in line.

 _He_ never thought before he spoke.

Even when she cries, it is silent.

As the petals of her grief unfurl she sees that it is not really him she misses but rather the weight of a weapon in her hand, the dance of it, sweaty and aching and triumphant; the bands of Musketeers turning up at her door at all hours of the day and night with their problems and their schemes, wrapping her in their intrigues, traipsing in mud.

She still bleeds, and tries not to think of how her husband scares her with his need for her, or how she has never felt less lucky.

She has learnt that tales are no more than what we tell ourselves; and though she wants nothing more than to blame her mother and her grandmother and her mother before her, and every mother all the way back to Eve, she knows that the child she was would not have understood. That some things cannot be understood until they come to you, or do not.

Instead she learns to listen more than she talks, to the call of the peewit and the chatter of the marketplace, and even to her husband's tentative attempts to fill the space between them, and does not let herself despair.

Even when every word of the old stories has fallen away, the lines on the page are left waiting, still singing in the morning, to be filled with what's to come.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 The chapter titles are in Frisian, and they're lyrics from the song [_Dûns fan de siedden_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onhm35bxh4Y) by Nynke Laverman, which was stuck in my head rather insistently while I was writing this. 
> 
> The English translations are:
> 
> I. The song of what's coming  
> II. How long until the flowers in your hair  
> III. Inside me a silent storm sings  
> IV. The sun opens you up  
> V. On the ashes of yesterday, the seeds dance


End file.
